Tuesday, May 31, 2016

Despite anti-gunnite talking points, most law abiding gun owners are not against background checks. We have no problem with making sure that the person attempting to purchase a firearm is not a bad person. But, do background checks actually stop Bad Guys from getting guns? For the most part, no. Hence, the NRA is not suggesting that we do away with the backgrounds check system, they just think it’s absurd to expand it, because it will almost never stop a bad character from getting a gun. And they are against the gun registration schemes of the anti-gunnites, because it is simply a big government control scheme. Furthermore, the government fails to enter those who are “adjudicated mentally incompetent into the National Instant Check System.” But, nothing will ever stop the gun haters from pushing their schemes

“I take responsibility for a decision that misrepresented an exchange I had with members of the Virginia Citizens Defense League,” Couric said in a statement.

The Global News anchor for Yahoo has been under fire ever since the Washington Free Beacon revealed Couric’s documentary was intentionally edited to make pro-gun Americans appear incapable of justifying their views.

At one point in the film, Couric asks the Virginia Citizens Defense League, “If there are no background checks for gun purchasers, how do you prevent felons or terrorists from purchasing a gun?”

QOTD: "Without the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, would be reduced to "just words on paper," Scalia warned. He also reminded audience members that the Founding Fathers did not deliberate over the Bill of Rights during the Constitutional Convention of 1787. Instead, they debated over structure of the federal government.

The most damaging change to this structure came in the form of the 17th Amendment, which provided for the direct, popular election of U.S. senators, Scalia said. Prior to when the amendment was ratified in 1913, state legislators would appoint U.S. senators. While this amendment was viewed as step forward for democracy, Scalia argued that it removed a key component of the constitutional structure the framers had put in place to protect federalism and state interests.

"You now have senators who have no connection to the state government, never been in state government and some of them have never been to the state," Scalia observed during his talk." --Kevin Mooney

Monday, May 30, 2016

Not that I remember what America was like in 1957, as I was not yet five years old. Years later, when I was old enough to understand, they told me their story. Briefly, it goes like this.

Dad was born in Romania (Czernowitz in Northern Bulovina), but he identified (haha) as German because, well, his dad was German, his mom was German, they spoke German and kept German customs, and lived in a German community so, applying the “quacking duck” theory, that’s what he was. Mom was born in Yugoslavia (now, Slovenia), but she identified as German for the same reasons as dad did. The Nazi regime would refer to folks such as my parents as “Volksdeutsche” —- being German as a people or race, regardless of citizenship.

QOTD: "In 1945, both Germany and Korea were divided into two areas, one under western, capitalist control, and one under communist control. Four decades later, West Germany and South Korea were thriving, first-world countries, creating wealth and spreading it widely across the socioeconomic spectrum. East Germany (which disappeared in 1989) and North Korea (unfortunately still with us) were hellholes of poverty and tyranny.

Today we have another natural experiment testing whether socialism or capitalism works better. In 1973, Chile was rescued from communism under Salvador Allende with a military coup and economic (and eventually political) reforms began. At that point Chile’s economic freedom as among the lowest in the world. Venezuela’s in 1975 was among the highest. Today the economic freedom of the two countries is reversed. So are their economic situations. In the 41 years since 1975, the Venezuelan economy has shrunk by 17 percent. Chile’s has grown by 287 percent. By virtually every measure Chile’s situation has radically improved, while Venezuela’s has sharply deteriorated." --John Steele Gordon, "Capitalism v. Socialism"

QOTD: "Do obscenities fall from [Donald Trump's] lips more readily than they did from Lyndon Johnson's or Richard Nixon's?

Are the circumstances of his three marriages more shameful than the circumstances of John F. Kennedy's pathologically unfaithful one—or that matter, Bill Clinton's humiliatingly unfaithful one? Have any of his egotistical excesses rivaled Andrew Jackson's killing a man in a duel over a racing bet and an insult to Jackson's wife?"" --Charles Kesler

Saturday, May 28, 2016

Responding to criticism of President Obama’s handling of terrorism, White House press secretary Josh Earnest boasted Thursday of all the setbacks the Islamic State has experienced in recent months, noting that in Iraq “45 percent of the populated area that ISIL previously controlled has been retaken from them. In Syria, that figure is now 20 percent.”

Friday, May 27, 2016

150 years ago, Mark Twain visited Muslim-occupied Israel and wrote of "unpeopled deserts" and "mounds of barrenness", of "forlorn" and "untenanted" cities.

Palestine is "desolate", he concluded. "One may ride ten miles hereabouts and not see ten human beings." The same is true of the Palestinian Museum which opened with much fanfare and one slight problem. While admission is free, there's nothing inside for any of the visitors to see except the bare walls.

The Palestinian Museum had been in the works since 1998, but has no exhibits. The museum cost $24 million. All it has to show for it are a few low sloping sandy buildings indistinguishable from the dirt and a "garden" of scraggly bushes and shrubs. The Palestinian Museum is open, but there's nothing inside.

A song of David: The Rabbis said: Wherever it says: “A song of David,” he would play [his musical instrument] and afterwards the Shechinah would rest on him. It is a song to bring the holy spirit upon David. And, wherever it says: “Of David, a song,” the Shechinah rested on him [first] and then he recited a song.

The Lord is my shepherd: In this desert where I am going, [therefore] I am confident that I will lack nothing.

Spotted at Western Rifle Shooters Association, this helpful infographic summarizes the wonderful popularization of gun ownership, the rampant weakening of unconsitutional gun control laws, and the ascent of concealed carry among the American population.

Obama's legacy will include, at a minimum, the following historical benchmarks:

• The appreciation of Smith & Wesson stock by a mere 1,100 percent (coulda, shoulda, woulda)
• Increasing Black Friday gun sales each and every year since 2009
• A tripling of aggregate gun sales when comparing the Bush and Obama administrations

QOTD: "Mrs. Clinton has insisted she would “talk to anybody, any time” about the emails, adding, “I’ve encouraged all of [my staff] to be very forthcoming.” ...[Yet her] three top staffers, including Huma Abedin, all refused to talk to the inspector general.

Clinton has insisted her information was secure... [Yet the] inspector general found that an adviser to Bill Clinton had to shut down the server on Jan. 9, 2011, because he believed “someone was trying to hack us.” Later that day he reported “we were attacked again so I shut [the server] down for a few min.”

The incident was never reported to computer security personnel at State.

And, of course, Clinton insists none of the information transmitted was classified “at the time,” but today we know at least 2,000 of Clinton’s messages were classified, some of them as “top secret.”

So many lies, so little time. And so very much for the FBI to sort out, let’s hope before November." --Boston Herald Staff

Thursday, May 26, 2016

Editor's note: Below are the video and transcript to Mark Geist's live interview with Truth Revolt editor and Shillman Journalism Fellow Mark Tapson at the David Horowitz Freedom Center's 2016 West Coast Retreat. The event was held April 8-10 at the Terranea Resort in Palos Verdes, CA.

Mark Tapson: I have the distinct privilege tonight to share the stage with one of the heroes of the 2012 Benghazi attacks and the coauthor of the book "Thirteen Hours." How many people here have either read the book or seen the movie "Thirteen Hours" or both? Okay, pretty good. I strongly recommend both. The book is a page-turning thriller and the movie is one of the best action flicks ever, and I'm a big action movie fan, but both of these have a key difference in them and that’s that the events that they depict were real and they were as serious as a heart attack. And that adds a very affecting emotional dimension to both reading the book and watching the movie, so I recommend them both.

QOTD: "Forget the Syrian Civil War for a moment. Even without the Sunnis and Shiites competing to give each other machete haircuts every sunny morning, there would still be a permanent Muslim refugee crisis.

Combine violence and poverty with a population boom and you get a permanent migration crisis.

No matter what happens in Syria or Libya next year, that permanent migration crisis isn’t going away.

The Muslim world is expanding unsustainably. In the Middle East and Asia, Muslims tend to underperform their non-Muslim neighbors both educationally and economically. Oil is the only asset that gave Muslims any advantage and in the age of fracking, its value is a lot shakier than it used to be. " --Daniel Greenfield

Wednesday, May 25, 2016

The State Department’s independent watchdog has issued a highly critical analysis of Hillary Clinton’s email practices while running the department, concluding that Clinton failed to seek legal approval for her use of a private server and that agency staff members would not have given their blessing if it had been sought because of “security risks.”

A review of Clinton’s stated positions on the issue suggests she is perhaps the most extreme candidate on immigration ever to run for the office of the U.S. Presidency. Her views place her even further outside the mainstream of the American electorate than President Barack Obama, who systematically dismantled U.S. immigration law during his two terms in office.

Below are just a few of the extreme immigration positions held by Clinton.